Health, Education, Infrastructure and Home Affairs were the departments with the highest bills, spending £208,967.77, £110,291.05, £111,341.88 and £123,247.23 respectively.
And according to the response, the Health Department managed to spend £25,945.86 within a single month in December 2014, as well as £15,175.27 in July 2015 and £9,836 in January 2016.
The bills do not necessarily reflect mobile phone usage and can include the purchase and servicing of phones, laptops and tablets, according to the response.
Data regarding the Social Security Department was not included as up until 2017, invoices were stored in a paper format and it was deemed that it would take longer than 12.5 hours to process all of the bills.
Meanwhile, a section of the request aimed at obtaining the individual bills of civil servants’ phone usage between October 2014 and February 2018 – who have incurred a monthly phone bill of more than £250 – was turned down.
Another part of the request, asking for the amount spent by each minister on their States’ mobile phone was also not fulfilled.
Explaining why the two sections of the request had been turned down, the response stated: ‘The States of Jersey’s corporate mobile phone contract operates on a special tariff that adds the usage of all mobile phones together, including officials and ministers.
‘The overall charges are then apportioned back out to departments without individual details. The cost can also depend on when the usage occurs rather than usage volume.
‘This means that some usage may generate a different charge depending on when it occurs, it is therefore not appropriate to disclose monthly charges as these may be misleading.’
The States have been approached for comment.
